Microsoft: Avoid choice overload and use Bing as your search engine

Ever heard of “choice overload?” In an official blog post, Microsoft’s Matt Wallaert, who calls himself a behavioral scientist at Bing, has begun a new series of blog posts called “Bing Your Brain.” The idea behind these blog posts is to reinforce to users that Bing is a better search engine.

So what exactly is choice overload? “Eight years ago, social psychologist Barry Schwartz gave an influential TED on “The Paradox of Choice”: that even though it seems like more choices should always be better, we are actually less happy when we have too many choices. This is because of a phenomenon psychologists call choice overload and if you’ve ever stood in the salad dressing aisle at your local supermarket, you know exactly what it is,” Microsoft explained in an official blog post.

Wallaert mentions three reasons that make us unhappy. First, choice overload results in post-decisional regret, sometimes called buyer’s remorse. Second, too many options means our searches take longer. Third, a big choice usually ends up in us giving up completely. “It is like looking at a line of people outside a theater and leaving because you feel like you’ll just never get inside; too much choice can cause us to abandon the things that we truly want,” Microsoft explains.

Microsoft reinforces that friends and experts are the key in making decisions, touting the search engine’s integration with Facebook social sidebar feature. Hit the source link to read more on choice overload.